The problem I have with using electricity for heat is that as an entire system, it is less efficient unless your electricity usage is 100% covered by solar panels. However, heat pumps may be an exception to this - it probably depends on where you live. I am not entirely sure.
For example, say that 100% of your electricity comes from natural gas. I am making up numbers here, but let's say the generator is 50% efficient, and you have a 5% transmission loss. By the time that energy is turned into heat by your electric stove/space heater, 47.5% of the energy has been wasted. If you have just burned the natural gas in the first place, you could probably get somewhere in the 80-90%(or higher) efficiency range. I know that not all of our energy comes from natural gas, but 40% of it is. Another 19% is produced by coal, and only 40% are produced by clean energy sources such as hydro, solar, or nuclear. It seems like it would be much less wasteful to just burn natural gas directly. Heat pumps are interesting though as they have the potential to move more heat energy than the energy they consume as electricity. Anyway, that's my take on it. I would love to hear opposing viewpoints. Nathan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20211203/6b279d91/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
